41MP + JDE = Extended Trial of Nokia Lumia 1020

This innocent looking package made its way to my front door today. Don’t let the external packaging fool you; This package contains leading edge technology from Nokia and Microsoft. This package holds the hardware that I will grasp, learn and manipulate in a content creating frenzy over the next few weeks. This package might as well be Christmas paper because this guy (pointing at myself) is as excited as a kid after a visit from Kris Kringle in late December.

Let’s unwrap the goodness!!

Oh boy…oh boy…oh boy…oh boy! OK, got that out of the way and now I can get down to business. My first impression was made before I even got the Lumia 1020 out of the box. My first impression was made before I even held the box. You see, the box is in this cardboard cylinder, decorated like a lens. Brilliant.

It also had the hash-tag #ZoomReinvented on it. I guess that is the code in Twitterville that you are displaying an example of the lossless zoom. I’ll be using that tag on Twitter.

Inside of the cylinder was proof that I’m now a mature adult. I did NOT pop a bunch of the bubble wrap. I stopped after like 4 or 5…cuz I’m a grown up. That bubble wrap had a job to do and that was to protect the goodies inside. What’s inside, you ask? Good question. As you can see on the right, we’re going to have to dig deeper. You can see the box that we know contains the device and on top of it are two little plastic baggies with tiny little figurines. I wonder if those are supposed to be little models to help me out with shooting. I’m going with YES and you will be seeing more of them, in the very near future.

Now I know that you’re all as curious as I was to see what inside of the inside of the package and we are just about to get there. Please note that these pictures of the Lumia 1020 are taking by its cousin, the Lumia 920.

I got her out and then realized that they still ship batteries a little less than half full. I popped it on the charger and went about my business for a while. Here’s my first picture OF the device. You can see the wrist strap on there. I’m pretty excited about such a small addition and how much more secure it will make me feel in case the thing slips out of my hands or I have to let go to catch a falling baby.

If it charged up, I went through the setup wizard and it’s grown into a useful tool if you are moving from one Windows Phone to another. It takes a bunch of your setting and accounts and all you have to do is supply the passwords and your email, contacts, calendar, Facebook post, etc. start populating the phone. The new stuff that it’s doing is pulling in your old text messages and reinstalling apps! What a time saver, that is.

I’ve only played with the device for a little bit. It had a lot of apps to install and I needed to log into a bunch of them. I do like the Glance screen which is the always on time and battery level, when the screen would normally be off. You can also double-tap the glass to wake up the phone instead of having to use the power button. Of course AT&T stripped out the Data Sense because they’d rather you NOT know how much data that you’re using so you can go over and they can charge for it. It’s sounds “pure evil” and I’m inclined to lean in that direction, but that’s a whole other blog in and of itself. I’ve also looked at the new camera apps, but I’ll wait to write about them until I’ve become more familiar with them. The tutorials definitely help and it looks like it will be pretty straight forward.

Some people have asked me about the “hump”on the back and I was kind of worried about that myself. It’s not bad at all, actually. If you lay the phone on its back, it will tilt, top side up towards you which is kind of nice. It’s also nice in the hand. It really doesn’t bother me at all and I’m sure after a few days go by, I won’t even notice it.

The bulk of my posts will be about the imaging of the device, but I will get into Windows Phone software and the other parts of the Nokia hardware. If you have questions, fire away and I’ll see what I can do.

For now, I’ve got to sign off and get in the shower and head out to Venice for my first photo & video shoot with the Lumia 1020. Look for it here later this week! The content creation frenzy has begun!!!